Biorefinery Location and Technology Selection Through Supply Chain Optimization

This paper proposes a mixed integer linear program for determining economical biomass processing facility locations and capacities, and applies it to assess the biofuel supply chain of the Midwestern United States and the feasibility of meeting governmental biofuel mandates in 2015. Existing corn ethanol facilities and new candidate facility sites are considered for biofuel production by utilizing eight types of biomass. The spatial distribution and farmgate cost of biomass is accessed from a recently updated U.S. Department of Energy database. Seven biomass processing technologies that are expected to be commercialized in the near-term are available for construction at each candidate facility site. A detailed cash flow analysis that includes capital depreciation and taxation is embedded into the model formulation to give insights into the minimum biofuel selling price for each facility site. Equilibrium market cost for the Renewable Fuel Standard biofuel classifications (renewable fuel, advanced biofuel, and cellulosic biofuel), which is directly related to the Renewable Identification Number market price, is determined through sensitivity analysis of the delivered biofuel price

Microexplosions in the Upgrading of Biomass-Derived Pyrolysis Oils and the Effects of Simple Fuel Processing

The development of biofuels produced from biomass-derived pyrolysis oils (bio-oil) requires a deeper understanding of the bio-oil vaporization required for catalytic hydrodeoxygenation, reforming and combustion processes. Through the use of high-speed photography, bio-oil droplets on a 500 °C alumina disk in nitrogen gas were observed to undergo violent microexplosions capable of rapidly dispersing the fuel. High speed photography of the entire droplet lifetime was used to determine explosion times, frequency and evaporation rates of the bio-oil samples that have been preprocessed by filtering or addition of methanol. Filtration of the oil prior to evaporation significantly reduced the fraction of droplets that explode from 50% to below 5%. Addition of methanol to bio-oil led to uniform vaporization while also increasing the fraction of droplets that exploded. Experiments support the necessity of dissolvable solids for the formation of a volatile core and heavy shell which ruptures and rapidly expands to produce a violent bio-oil microexplosion